Problems with Product Roadmaps; Sunsetting products; Buyers don’t want your content

Jeff Lash

Three problems with product roadmaps (and how to fix them)

Over on the SiriusDecisions blog, I provided some food for thought (pun intended) last week in advance of the U.S. Thanksgiving break with my post on Three Problems With Product Roadmaps. What are the problems, you ask?

  • Confusing short-term plans with a roadmap.
  • Executives confusing a roadmap with the roadmapping process.
  • Product managers having an ad hoc process for roadmap creation.

Want to know how to solve them? Well, read the full post for my three recommendations, and be sure not to miss good comments from Geoff Anderson (@gander2112) and Bruce McCarthy (@d8a_driven). Maybe you have some comments to add too?

What’s hot on Twitter

Here are a few of my tweets which have generated the most interest over the past few weeks; to get these in real-time, follow me at @jefflash:

  • A Gantt Chart is not a Product Launch Plan. #prodmgmt #prodmktg #launch (permalink)
  • Pricing: Why Customers Choose The Higher Priced Product (More Than 95% of the time) j.mp/Ql0AXu #pricing (permalink)
  • Without product documentation, would your customers be able to use it & get 80-90% of the benefit from it? j.mp/Ql0ajJ (permalink)
  • Good article on #gamification and considerations for adding it to your products j.mp/XBuEAb #prodmgmt (permalink)
  • American Breakfast & the Mother-in-Law: How an Anthropologist Created Go-Gurt j.mp/UJp88l #prodmgmt #ux #anthropology #innovation (permalink)

Best practices in communications around sunsetting products

Announcing the end of a product’s life is no fun but there come times when it has to be done. Unfortunately, communicating to current customers and the market in general is often overlooked or mishandled. My colleague Lisa Singer (@lisagsinger) provides these tips on what she calls a product marketer’s least favorite task.

Buyers don’t want your content

Lastly, also from the SiriusDecisions blog, my colleague Erin Estep (@eeestep) has a realization for business-to-business marketers that Buyers Don’t Want Your Content. As she writes, “organizations of all sizes are struggling to make internal changes so they can meet the ‘content requirements’ of today’s buyers. But buyers don’t want more content! They actually want less content, and more information. … While content strategy is important, it needs to be based on information that buyers are actually looking for, instead of thinking about content as an end in itself.” Read the full post and the discussion that follows.